Development Impact Fees

The Transportation Agency for Monterey County has established a Regional Development Impact Fee program in Monterey County, helping to streamline the process for analyzing and mitigating transportation impacts.

To maximize safety and minimize congestion for Monterey County’s travelers, adequate transportation infrastructure must be available to serve population growth and land use development identified in adopted general plans across the county. The Regional Development Impact Fee program provides a mechanism through which “growth pays for growth” and the county’s projected transportation needs can be met.

The Transportation Agency’s Regional Development Impact Fee streamlines the existing ad hoc environmental review system. Regional transportation impacts of planned development across the county are analyzed through the program, eliminating the need for expensive traffic analyses from each new development project, and the current lengthy negotiations over appropriate mitigations. In instances where a local traffic impact fee is already assessed, the local and cumulative traffic impacts of development would be accounted for through payment of fees. No additional analysis is required aside from that which is needed to address the localized, project-specific impacts of new development on surrounding transportation infrastructure.

The Regional Development Impact Fee Nexus Study Update provides more detail on how the regional fee program was developed, as well as the 4-zone fee schedule. The Regional Fee program has been approved by the requisite number of city councils and the County Board of Supervisors and went into effect August 27, 2008.